The Newark teacher strike continues, though it has disappeared from the headlines. The press reported the start of the strike, the clubbing of a group of teachers by a uniformed band of young men, the arrest of the teacher leaders and the fact that the Mayor, the president of the Board of Education, the teacher union president and the local "community" leader are all black. Beyond that, the public has been told little or nothing about this major struggle.
The media have stated that the strike issue is basically whether the school board or teachers shall make educational policy. Nowhere have we been told that the Newark Board of Education and Mayor Gibson deliberately provoked the strike by confronting teachers with absolutely impossible demands. These demands included: a 48-month contract, with respect to which "the Board of Education refuses to discuss any economic items. The only economic impact will be the implementation of the current salary schedule" ( original language); increase in class size; removal of the current contract provision calling for impartial arbitration of grievances; a longer school day; reduction of vacation time; unlimited assignment of teachers to police, monitorial and clerical chores in and out of school; the ouster of teachers from their schools without due process and over a dozen other such demands. When one considers this list of demands, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Mayor Gibson hopes to solve some of the economic problems of his bankrupt city by shutting down the schools and shifting the responsibility for their closing from himself to the teachers. So far, with the help of the press, he is succeeding.
Another clue to Mayor Gibson's role can be seen in his reaction to the violence against teachers, which occurred. The Mayor should have expressed indignation, condemned the violence and either closed the schools to prevent further violence or guaranteed adequate police protection. Mayor Gibson did none of these. Instead, he ordered the schools kept open and announced that he could not provide "a policeman for every teacher" (something which had never been asked). The Mayor's statement can be read as a warning to the teachers that, if they stay out on strike, they'll get more of the same!
A close look at the facts in the strike impels us to raise some important issues:
First: Under present archaic laws governing public employees, an injunction was still in effect from last year's strike, in complete disregard of the rights and wrongs in that earlier case. What was provoked by the Mayor and school board will have to be paid for by the teachers in heavy fines and jail terms. Isn't it timed to revise these laws which punish the teacher victims rather than the guilty public officials?
Second: The strike exposes and clarifies our current racial morality. When, in Newark, blacks attack blacks with clubs, knives, and Bill Conner-like dogs, the fact that there is no racial confrontation apparently makes it less newsworthy and less subject to moral indignation. Had an uniformed band of whites clubbed a group of black teachers there would have been proper indignation at this manifestation of racism. When groups of blacks attack white teachers it is viewed, by some, for their own political reasons, as healthy manifestation of back rebelliousness and liberation. Isn't it timed to abandon this racial double standard of morality and condemn the use of force and violence without regard to race of attacker and attacked?
Third: The Newark teacher strike is one in which even those usually cool to labor can see extreme and unprecedented provocation by the employer and a return of old-fashioned gangster-type violence. The fact that the employer happens to be government itself makes matters even worse for it deprives the strikers of their usual protection and an avenue of appeal. It is this kind of struggle, which once drew many political liberals and many in the academic community to the support of the cause of labor. So far, in the Newark teachers' strike, liberals and intellectuals have been silent. Only the labor unions have come forth to defend the teachers. It is to be hoped that those who once rallied to the support of labor in the past struggles have not so convinced themselves that "labor unions aren't what they used to be" that they will fail to step forward in this struggle for justice.